


Hard Feelings

by PutAnotherX



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, M/M, One Shot, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Regret, can be read as platonic or romantic, dissolution of friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 13:12:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13904727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PutAnotherX/pseuds/PutAnotherX
Summary: These are what they call hard feelings.A brief study of Tony Stark after Civil War.





	Hard Feelings

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_Three years, loved you every single day, made me weak_  
_It was real for me, yup, real for me_  
_Now I'll fake it every single day 'til I don't need fantasy, 'til I feel you leave_

_—Hard Feelings, Lorde_

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It’s strange knowing that whatever happens next, they will never be the same. The fallout from this will never really go away, and if never feels like an eternity it’s because it is.

Tony tries not to think about it, but when he’s alone and tired and tipsy, he remembers seeing the car swerve off the road, seeing that metal hand wrap around his mother’s throat. Seeing the man that killed her standing next to him. Seeing in Steve’s face that he _knew_.

The feeling in his chest makes him consider an appointment with a cardiologist, but he’s never been that proactive about his own health. He drinks more. Not enough to draw attention, just a glass of whiskey—or two, or three, or four—in the evening. He buries himself in his work the way he’s always done. He ignores the concern written across Pepper’s face and Rhodey’s and Happy’s. 

He spends most of his time in New York. His Manhattan penthouse and the Avengers Compound upstate becomes more of a home than his rebuilt Malibu mansion.

He throws himself headfirst into the whole mentor thing. True, he isn’t very hands-on, but the last thing a kid like Peter needs in his life is an erratic, alcoholic billionaire micromanaging his every move and disrupting the delicate balance he’s struck between school and web-slinging. So Tony puts Happy in charge, but he watches and listens because this kid is _good_ , and he deserves a real chance to come into his own as a hero with as little trauma as can be managed.

Tony also watches the little flip phone. He reads and rereads one of the worst apologies he’s ever experienced. He starts to build up his own apology, but it gets stuck on _YouKnewYouKnewYouKnewYouKnew_ over and over again. He prays that the phone’ll ring, and he prays that it won’t. He isn’t ready to apologize, and it’s clear that Steve wasn’t either when he wrote that letter.

And Tony searches for a new solution—any solution, really—for Rhodey’s spine and Peter brings his plane down on the beach at Coney Island and Tony offers Peter a spot on the Avengers and a room at the compound and Peter says no and the phone doesn’t ring and Tony doesn’t call Steve.

As awful as he feels, as sick as it makes him, he never regrets fighting Steve. And Tony knows—he knows it deep down in his bones—that even if they make up tomorrow, it’ll never be the same.

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_I’ll start letting go of little things 'til I’m so far away from you, far away from you, yeah  
—Hard Feelings, Lorde_

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**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are love. Constructive criticism always welcome.


End file.
